Each year, about 4 million books are published; 10% of them are fiction books. This is because, besides novels and screenplays, fiction books are often used in musical videos, video games, and advertisements. To meet this increased demand, the onus falls on you, the fiction writer, to churn them out.
As people yearn for the next fiction book, novella, or drama, you’ll need motivation to continue writing your stories. It’s not unusual for your imagination tank to dry up, hindering your productivity. But what do you do when you can’t find inspiration as a fiction writer? This article attempts to answer this question.
10 Tips to Find Inspiration as a Fiction Writer
You can find inspiration in unlikely places, from people and things around you, your experiences, and life events. Let’s see how.
1. Childhood Memories and Personal Conflicts
Your childhood can and should inspire your writing. These memories can serve as prompts for character, plot developments, and twists. They can provide a basis to set the tone and give you a context for dispute resolution.
And the good thing about it is that it’ll make your writing authentic and relatable because it’s based on reality.
Find inspiration in your hopes, sense of duty, and societal expectations; they are all good sources for character representation.
Also Read: Effective Ways to Be More Productive as a Full-Time Writer
2. Relationships
Man is a social being, we need interactions with others to survive. But that shouldn’t be the only basis of your relationships as a writer. See them as an avenue to learn.
You can create tension and suspense in romantic stories by using themes like jealousy and desire that happen in our daily relations with others.
You can develop themes from your domestic relations, conflicts, and household dynamics.
3. Love and Heartbreak
Love and heartbreak are universal themes, and many readers resonate and empathise with them. You can create compelling characters and engagements with these powerful storytelling themes.
Try to capture the raw emotions experienced by individuals, exploring emotions that come from heartbreak, like sadness, anger, and despair.
4. Fear and Anxiety
Scenes that show fear and anxiety in your characters can invoke emotional responses from your readers. Fear and anxiety can move your characters and plot ahead.
For instance, your characters can make mistakes due to anxiety or encounter serendipitous occurrences due to their fear that would make them grow up.
5. Joy and Happiness
Everyone likes a happy story. They can uplift your reader’s spirits and offer them a brief escape from reality.
Readers relate not only to sadness but also to happiness. You can transport them – through your writing – to a time in their life when they were joyful and relaxed.
6. Observing People
Writers are and should be great observers; this is probably why many writers are introverted. You need to be able to see a great story in everything.
It could be anything: the children going to school, your siblings arguing, your gossipy co-worker, your boring lecturer, your talkative Uber driver, the waitress at the cafe, the life of your elderly neighbours.
When you observe people, you will find inspiration by examining their behaviours and mannerisms.
You can develop your characters using the dialogues, conversations, speech patterns, dialects, or accents of the people you encounter.
7. Nature and the Environment
Nature is not just to be enjoyed, we are meant to learn from it as well. There’s inspiration everywhere in the environment, from animals, the sea, the sky, rain and natural landscapes. You just have to look closely.
8. Society and Culture
You can find themes in social issues plaguing society, like poverty, inequality, racism, discrimination, and gender roles.
Apart from that, historical events such as the world wars and civil rights movements can also inspire your writing.
Also, observe cultural events like folklore and mythologies, festivals and celebrations; you can always find interesting themes in them.
9. Read Extensively in Various Genres
Reading exposes you to a world outside you, broadening your mind. Great writers know that they also have to be great readers.
A book can give you wonderful ideas that simply need to be expanded. They’ll also help improve your writing style, vocabulary, grammar, and tone.
Extensive reading is also a way of carrying out research. It will expand your knowledge and enable you to write more accurate stories.
Also Read: Must-Have Reading Apps to Download as a Book Lover
10. Arts
Arts is also a powerful tool to find inspiration as a fiction writer. For instance, seeing a painting can strengthen your descriptive prowess or paint the right settings for your characters.
A movie can make you ask what-if questions that will transform your writing. And music can inspire you to get into the mind of the artist.
Paying attention to art will not only inspire you, but it will teach you to look beyond the surface when interpreting art.
Stay Inspired
Whenever you experience writer’s block, understand that you can overcome it. Take a break if you need to, and then take advantage of all the above to find inspiration to move your story along.
What other ways do you find inspiration as a fiction writer? Let me know in the comments section below.
